In this paper, I posit that Chekhov, in composing his plays, came to master the oedipal tensions and conflicts embodied by his psychic image of his mother and biological father as well as of his artistic father, Shakespeare. Chekhov framed his feelings about his parents through his many versions of the Hamlet closet scene, in which Hamlet kills Polonius and upbraids his mother for having married Claudius. Chekhov eventually transformed that scene to embody his new post-oedipal vision of his parents and of himself. In the process, he created a new scenic structure for dramatizing oedipal strivings.